Mikaela Shiffrin star attraction at US Ski Team public event in Vail

Vail — Mikaela Shiffrin is the youngest star of the U.S. Ski Team, but she was a crowd favorite Thursday evening when the team made a public appearance here that attracted about 300 fans to celebrate the start of a new season.

Shiffrin, 17, calls Eagle-Vail home, and last Saturday she captured her second podium appearance in just 12 World Cup slalom starts, finishing third in Levi, Finland. Shiffrin also finished third last season — her first on the World Cup — in a slalom at Lienz, Austria.

Julia Mancuso and Bode Miller also spoke to the crowd, but Shiffrin lit up the stage.

“I was born in Vail,” Shiffrin told the crowd. “I remember going up Chair 6 when I was 5 years old and I couldn’t reach the (safety) bar, but going up Chair 12 was like a two-person chair, it was tiny, you could put the bar down. That was great.”

Shiffrin beamed, and the crowd loved her.

The event also celebrated Vail’s 50th anniversary season. A few members of the 1962 U.S. Ski Team, who had a training camp in Vail that first season, were in attendance. One of them was Bill Marolt, now the team’s chief executive.

“I think the thing that’s really cool about Vail, and the reason it has such tremendous racing heritage and history is because of the guys who founded it –- Peter Seibert, Morrie Shepard -– all of those guys who came here in the early days and believed in ski racing, and believed that ski racing could make a difference in a resort. It’s clear that it has.”

I am writing a feature on Shiffrin that will appear soon in The Denver Post. The women’s World Cup comes to Aspen Nov. 24-25 for giant slalom and slalom races.